About Me-email is... grant.go@aol.com

Friday, November 9, 2012

Oil spill Post being held for now

Until I get confirmation, I will have to hold back the post.....

Something`s going on..

Be patient..

No information as of yet, maybe the containment boom was placed out of precaution, I just spent the last hour and a half walking the Chevron perimeter .....There is a lot of digging going on, all the asphalt around one of the big tanks has been dug up, ..

In attempting to evesdrop on the workers digging and moving asphalt, they unfortunately are speaking Mexican,

A report 2 weeks ago came out about the seabird decline in Vancouver harbour, the decline has been blamed on many many small oil spills from ocean going tankers,..

From my untrained eye, there does appear to be sheening on the water in and around the containment boom, ...No one from Chevron is talking....

Burrard Inlet oil leak investigation questioned

Ministry says litigation not the best solution

A Burnaby city councillor is
accusing B.C.'s Ministry of the Environment of playing politics with an
ongoing oil leak from a Burrard Inlet oil refinery by not collecting
samples from the site.

Chevron Canada Limited discovered oil seeping into the inlet in
April, but after nearly eight months of testing the company still
doesn't know exactly where it's coming from, why it's leaking and how
much has made its way into the ecosystem.The company says it's concerned about the leak and is co-operating with government officials."The site is proving to be very challenging," said Chevron spokesman
Ray Lord. "We also continue to work with the designated authorities who
are monitoring our progress on the clean up activity."Lord said the company is working under difficult circumstances to clean up the leak."We're equally as frustrated with the progress this is taking. The
efforts to identify a source within the refinery of any new current
contributing sources are ongoing. We're working with a refinery that's
actually functioning. it's a heavy industrial site so drilling wells and
sampling within the site is challenging," said Lord.

Source of leak not identified

But area residents and environmentalists doubt the company's findings and they're not the only ones asking questions"The frustration has been not to find a source, not to find a resolution," Burnaby engineering director Deepak Dattani told CBC News.

'Litigation isn't always the most appropriate manner to ensure environmental quality is maintained and restored.—Statement issued by the Ministry of the Environment

"We've asked Chevron what's the quantity that been released and we've not had an answer to date."Chevron maintained in April that the oil leak is small -- about 100
millilitres, or seven tablespoons, per day. The company also said the
leak results not from flaws at the facility, but from an historical seep
from the ground. But none of the data appears confirmed.Burnaby city councillor Dan Johnston said that the province, as the regulator, has to step up with answers.

Samples not collected

Johnston
also wants the ministry to explain the meaning of an internal
environment ministry email obtained under a Freedom of Information
request by the Burnaby Now newspaper.In the email Ministry staff overseeing Chevron appeared to have made
the decision not to collect samples for investigative purposes, so as
not to "compromise a cooperative working relationship with Chevron.""The ministry seems to make its priority on politics rather than human need," said Johnston."Chevron's corporate image seems to be impacting the ministry's decision and I think that's pretty scary."The ministry did issue a written statement on Monday evening, saying
it has chosen to work collaboratively with Chevron since "litigation
isn't always the most appropriate manner to ensure environmental quality
is maintained and restored."

Oil spill cruise finds field of dead coral

Scientific expedition assesses deep-sea damage in the Gulf of Mexico.

Mark Schrope

One of the affected corals with attached brittle sea star.Courtesy of the BOEMRE and NOAA OER Lophelia II expedition

A
team of researchers surveying the depths of the Gulf of Mexico have
found a large area of dead or dying corals and associated animals.
Though the scientists caution that they cannot say definitively what
caused the damage, they believe the limited evidence available points to
the Deepwater Horizon oil spill as the culprit. "It was immediately obvious when we pulled up to this site that
almost all of the corals were in bad shape," says Charles Fisher from
Pennsylvania State University in University Park, the expedition's chief scientist. "It wasn't subtle: they were covered with brown material." The group's two-leg 'Lophelia II' expedition began 14 October when
they cleared the narrow port at Pensacola, Florida, aboard the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) flagship research vessel Ronald H. Brown.
Aboard were researchers from a variety of institutions, including a
team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts who
brought the remotely operated submersible Jason.Watching camera feeds from Jason
in the vehicle control room mounted on the ship's deck, the team first
saw damaged hard coral, and then a large field of gorgonian soft corals,
or sea fans, nearly all of which appeared heavily damaged. Some were
covered in brown material; others were losing their tissue or stripped
to their hard skeletons. The brittle sea stars that commonly intertwine
these soft corals, which are normally seen waving their arms, were
discoloured and immobile."Those images are straight out of my nightmares,"